The event will focus on ways to explore film studies research through non-traditional approaches. Examples include: performance, video essays, interpretative dance, creative fiction/non-fiction, poetry, music, and any kind of multimedia project. Through this symposium, we would like to explore the connections between scholarship and fandom, research and creativity, the benefits and disadvantages of exploring an (audio)visual art through (audio)visual means, and the development of the innovative and ever-emerging field of practice as research.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

– Star studies

– Film History

– Fan magazine research

– Audience reception studies

– Archival research

– Genre studies

– Aspects of film analysis

Potential contributors should submit abstracts of 300 words and a short biography to normma.network@gmail.com by Friday 27th February, 2015.

The cinematic release of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) has already garnered speculation, derision and debate equal to its highly controversial source text, E. L. James’ homonymous trilogy. Its alignment with mass media, a predominantly female audience and mainstream cinema make it a concurrently anticipated and abhorred rich contemporary text. Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media thus invites papers which will interrogate this adaptation from a plethora of new perspectives including industry, text and reception analysis.

Considering the timeliness of this topic, the deadline for submissions of 6-8k papers accompanied by 250 word abstracts and 150 word bios is April 30th 2015 for publication this year. Submissions should be emailed to assistant editor Sarah Taylor-Harman at Sarah.Harman@brunel.ac.uk.
Inquiries and expressions of interest are also welcomed.

Girls and women are arguably producing more media than ever before. As bloggers, vloggers and “tweeters”, filmmakers, television showrunners, web designers, game developers, and musicians – to name only a few – girls and women are active contributors to contemporary media production cultures. Yet, recent incidents such as Gamergate point to the continuous precarious positioning that girls and women occupy as both amateur and professional media producers within a context shaped by what Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) has recently called “popular misogyny.” What is at stake for female media producers within this context? How do identities such as gender, race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, and ability shape one’s participation in production cultures? How are gendered neoliberal imperatives to be constantly productive informing who is producing media and what these media texts look like? And in what ways are girls and women mobilizing media production as an activist strategy to challenge sexism, racism, classism and other social inequalities across local, national, and international contexts?

We are seeking papers for a one-day symposium that aims to examine these questions and explore girls’ and women’s production of a wide range of commercial and alternative media texts.

This one-day symposium, featuring a keynote lecture by Mary Celeste Kearney (University of Notre Dame, USA), will be held at Middlesex University in London UK on June 16, 2015. It will serve as an opportunity for discussion and networking for feminist media scholars focusing on production cultures prior to the Console-ing Passions Conference in Dublin from June 18 – 20. This event is organized as part of Middlesex University’s FemGenSex Research Network and the Media Department’s Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster.

The 3rd annual FSN Conference took place at the University of East Anglia on 27-28th June 2015. Keynoted by Lincoln Geraghty (University of Portsmouth, UK) and Suzanne Scott (The University of Texas at Austin, USA), the event featured scholars from around the world presenting on many different aspects of fan studies. You can view the conference programme here.

Proposals for 20 minute papers are invited for a One-Day Symposium to mark the 40th Anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s JAWS.

The Symposium takes place on Wednesday 17 June 2015 from 10.00 – 6.00 in HA 0.08 at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

The Symposium is part of the Faculty of Technology Research Seminar Series and is hosted at the Leicester Media School by The Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre and The Centre for Adaptations, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

Keynote speakers include Nigel Morris, author of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light and editor of The Blackwell Companion to Steven Spielberg.

Brief proposals, biographies and a note of institutional affiliation should be sent to Professor Ian Hunter: iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk. The deadline for proposals is 31 March 2015.

For the attention of all postgrads/early career researchers (please pass this email on if you know one),

Networking Knowledge – the Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network – is seeking expressions of interest from prospective editors, authors and peer reviewers.

Guest Editors:

The journal publishes specifically-themed guest edited issues throughout the year. The journal is now calling for prospective guest editors who are interested in editing collections of articles on a theme of their choice. This will include conceiving the theme and its parameters, seeking and selecting authors of 5-8 articles through both commissioning and an open call for papers, managing the peer review process, copy-editing articles and contributing a short editorial introduction to the finished collection. Guest editors will be supported throughout the process by the Journal Editor, who will also prepare the final articles for online publication.

This is a valuable opportunity for PG researchers to gain experience of all aspects of peer-reviewed journal publication, as well as developing interaction with peers who have similar research interests. Teams of two or three Guest Editors are acceptable, as well as individuals. Themes can be drawn from any aspect of the subject areas covered by MeCCSA. They should represent a cutting-edge and specific research focus, but be open enough to accommodate a range of disciplinary, methodological and/or geographical areas.

As a guide, some previous special issues have focused on:

•Time and Technology in Popular Culture, Media and Communication
•Branding TV: Transmedia to the Rescue
•Protest and the New Media Ecology

•A provisional title for the collection
•The proposed theme, including a brief explanation of existing relevant research and what the collection will seek to contribute
•Brief examples of potential contributors (to be commissioned) and article topics (to be included in a call for papers)
•Name(s), institution(s) and e-mail address(es) for the prospective guest editor(s)

Articles:

As well as guest editors of themed issues,Networking Knowledge is now also seeking material for open submission.

Such articles, interviews, reviews and conference reports are to be published in standard issues. These pieces will be firstly screened by the Journal Editor for relevance and suitability, then peer reviewed by two members of our PG advisory board. Submissions can be on any of the broad subject areas covered by MeCCSA. Abstracts of no more than 150 words can, in the first instance, be e-mailed to the journal editor. The editor will then inform the author if a formal submission will be relevant and suitable. Alternatively, full submissions can be sent unsolicited to the journal editor.

More detailed author guidelines are available here: http://ojs.meccsa.org.uk/index.php/netknow/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

Peer Reviewers:

The journal is also looking for experts across all areas of media, communications and cultural studies to join its advisory board of peer reviewers. As a member of the advisory board, you will get hands-on experience of the peer reviewing process and be part of this dynamic and multi-disciplinary journal. All postgraduate and early career researchers who would like to be involved in encouraging cutting edge and high standard scholarship in this open access online journal are invited to volunteer.

Members of the advisory board are required to write a single page report on articles that relate to their specific research interest(s) and make a recommendation as to its suitability for publication. It is a ‘double blind’ process so both authors and reviewers remain anonymous.

If you are interested, please send the following information to the Journal Editor:

NB. those who are already members of the advisory board, please contact the editor to update contact details and areas of expertise if they’ve changed recently.

Expressions of interest in editing a special issue, contributing an article or other material, or joining the advisory board of the journal, should be sent to the Journal Editor, Simon Dawes, atsimondawes0@gmail.com

We are pleased to invite submissions for the second issue of SERIES, a new international open access journal on TV serial narratives. The main focus of the journal is to promote a global discussion forum and an interdisciplinary exchange among scholars engaged in research into TV serial narratives. SERIES encourages methodological innovation in academic research, providing new contributions for a better understanding of the narrative, technological, economic, social and cultural impact of TV serial dramas. Articles should deal with television series, web series and/or telenovelas. According to that we will welcome submissions on every topic related to TV serial narratives for our second issue.

In addition, a relevant issue at the moment seems to be the size of serial production that now more than ever have been so diverse and manifold. New broadcasters/producers and new forms of fruition are outlining a scenario in which the size of the series have become particularly important, also in determining the performance of the product in terms of ratings/advertising/sponsors/product placement, etc. Papers devoted to the study of this topic will be specially welcomed.

If you are interested in this call for papers, please send your full manuscript before June 30, 2015. The deadline for the editorial work (open and peer review process, editing and improvement of articles if needed, etc.) is September 30, 2015. Expected publication date of the issue: November 2015.

For more information about the journal, please visit the website: http://seriesjournal.org

‘Symfrozium’: A study day on Frozen (2013)
12th May 2015
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Released in 2013, Frozen has become the most successful animated film of all time. Widely touted in popular discourse as Disney’s ‘first foray into feminism’ the film’s apparent privileging of female kinship over heterosexual romance has been seen as marking the film out from its precursors in the Disney ‘princess’ franchise. Whilst academic scholarship on Frozen will no doubt be forthcoming, such claims are yet to be subject to sustained interrogation. Indeed, whilst the film’s apparently unprecedented popularity and cultural impact has garnered significant attention in popular media discourse, the film’s significance for Film, Media, Cultural studies and beyond has yet to be visibly debated. Thus, this free one day event will offer the opportunity to take up this interrogation and to reflect upon the issues and questions raised by the film in the context of its significant cultural moment since 2013.

Topics may include – but are not limited to:

Representations of gender, sexuality, race and class
Critical reception
‘Queer’ readings
The role of the soundtrack, both textually and extra-textually
Merchandising and commodification
Marketing
Industrial context
Relationship to Disney princess precursors
Social media and audience uses
Fan communities
Girl culture
Circulation within ‘parent’ culture
Issues of adaptation (given that the film was loosely based on The Snow Queen [1844])
Negative responses to the ‘cultural assault’ of Frozen
Brozen

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be emailed to either Su Holmes(susan.holmes@uea.ac.uk) or Sarah Godfrey (s.godfrey@uea.ac.uk) by Monday 9th March. Please include your institutional affiliation and brief bio. Questions welcome.

Proposals for both panels and individual papers are now being accepted for all aspects of Fan Culture including, but not limited to, the following areas:
•Fan Fiction
•Fan/Creator interaction
•Race, Gender and Sexuality in Fandom
•Music Fandom
•Reality Television Fandom
•The Internet and Fandom
•Fan Communities
•Fan Media Production
•Fans as Critics
•Cosplay
•Fan crafts
•Fan pilgrimages

We invite academics, professionals, cultural practitioners and those with a scholarly interest in popular culture, to send a 150 word abstract and 100 word bio to Katherine Larsen at fandom@popcaanz.com.
Panel proposals should include one abstract of 200 words describing the panel, accompanied by the abstracts (250 words) of the individual papers that comprise the panel. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals.

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Welcome!

This blog will feature posts such as CFPs or announcements that scholars may find of interest. If there is anything you think we should feature, please get in touch: our details are on the Who We Are page above.

If you are interested in joining the network, please sign up to our discussion list at http://jiscmail.ac.uk/fanstudies. We hope it will be a fruitful forum, proving useful in terms of making contacts, asking for advice, and sharing ideas.